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Message Posting Guidelines

Originally posted by: Khalid Ali

Having seen countless threads opened on these forums that make no sense at all,and do no
help to any volunteer to respond to it. I thought its only appropriate to write something like this that may help a new poster to get help quicker. Following are some general guidelines that must be kept in mind when posting a new topic or when you are responding to one as well.

I got help from several internet forum sites where they have simmilar messages posted.

Very Important use SEARCH feature.

Look towards your right on the screen,you'll see the http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/search.php]SEARCH
This actually is a great feature, and believe me in most of the cases your question, chances are, have been answered multiple times already.
This will save allots of forum resources as well as it will save you to from waiting anxiously for your question to be responded to.

Be very DESCRIPTIVE

I can not emphasis more on this one, I hate to see threads which are vague and leave us( volunteers) guessing that what could have been wrong or what the poster actually meant. So please be kind and describe your question as much as you can, Phrases like these "Why my code does not work" or the worst ones are where you post several hundred lines of code and heading only says "Can you help me?",are a total no no.<br/>
Please follow these guidelines for your sake as well as volunteers sake.<br/>

1. Explain to us what your script DOES (or what it's supposed to do).

2. Explain to us what exactly the error is. Is it a JavaScript error?
Is it some server side related error Or is it just not doing what you
want?

3. Remember that (or so we hope) you know a lot more about your code than we do. Don't assume we know just what it does.

4. Most of the volunteers at this site are really good at what they do; however, do not expect them to know about every piece of garbage code, that is scattered all over the internet.
So phrases like "I took this code from XXXXX site why doesn't it work", means nothing. Please be descriptive as in item 2 above.

Stupid topic names, that MUST NOT be used

Post a descriptive topic name! Give a short summary of your problem
IN THE SUBJECT field.

Below is a list of some universally agreed upon topic headings that YOU SHOULD NOT POST :

1) Help me

2) Hello please help me

3) this is driving me nuts

4) newbie alert

5) Newbie needs help

6) Challenge for JavaScript gurus

7) XXXXX doubt

8) This is too complicated for me

9) Is this possible?

10) Very urgent

11) I have a question

12) I have a problem

13) Stupid question

14) Something wrong

15) pulling my hair out

16) Its probably easy for you

Generally ANYTHING similar to the above is not descriptive enough.

Here are few good topic heading examples

"Error: getting a NaN error"

or may be:

"Getting an object required error when loading"

Or something like this

"text1 is null or not an object error!"

ONLY POST THE PART OF YOUR SCRIPT THAT HAS PROBLEMS!

PLEASE do not post your entire script in a message. Only post the part of your script where you have problems.

That's it. Just a very small piece of it. It's not hard. Just find the
part you think doesn't work and post that. WE DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR
ENTIRE SCRIPT. And if you post the entire script it's going to take us a lot longer to find the problem. And if you must then please upload your file as txt or zip file.

Do not expect us to go through several hundred lines of code to figure out where you have omitted a comma.

PUT YOUR CODE in PHP vB code blocks!!!

Hundreds of times every week we see people post a huge ugly script right into the message, this code in most cases is too hard to read.

Please use the built in vB code formatting using<br/>
square bracket PHP square bracket<br/>
This will color code your script good enough for readability.<br/> If you use that your code may look like this

PHP Code:

function colorCoded(){
if(some=="another"){
colorCodingIsGood();
}
}

Line Number!

Please let us know that which line caused the error and what that line's code is supposed to do when it works. Tell us what,in general, your script is supposed to do and why it "doesn't work". Or if you don't know why it does not work then at least tell us what the offending code is supposed to do.

When you come in and say "it doesn't work" or just "it has errors",
that means NOTHING. There could be hundreds of things wrong and no one
will know where to look.

If you're not going to take the advice, don't ask for help.

Often times, people post questions about their script with the
wrong mindset from the very beginning. Soon they are receiving replies,
and silently debugging their code, making no effort to even acknowledge
the people helping them! It becomes one sided, and the poster isn't
aware that many of the people helping them hope to learn something as
well! Letting people know of your progress and how their suggestions
apply (or do not apply) will not only help you figure out your problem
quicker, but you'll be returning the favor to those of us who learn
more by helping.

In even worse scenarios, sometimes the poster will argue back even
when they don't know what they're talking about. Hey - if you know it
all, don't ask for help.

When people give you free code that may solve your problem, by all
means, try it out! And if it's not what you need, at least thank them. <br>

And if you find some responses over your head, ask them for a better
explanation. Donít come back arguing that it wasn't what you need,if you knew what you needed you wouldn't have posted a question in first place ,would you?.

Remember when people help you, they are doing YOU the favor

Regardless of how big your ego is, it is NOT someone else's
privilege to debug Your code. It is not their privilege to have them
help you. It is YOURS. Remember that when people help you they are
doing YOU the favor. You are not doing them a favor by letting them see
your incredible buggy application. Be patient help people out by posting
good descriptions of what you need help with, and not snapping at
people with garbage such as "if you aren't going to help don't waste my
time replying".